Friday, December 25, 2015

CES 2016: LG to unveil rollable OLED products.

LG Display, teaming up with LG Electronics, is expected to unveil its rollable organic light-emitting diode (OLED) products at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

"Rollable displays, in themselves, are a new technology, which means LG Display will not surprise audiences with massive-sized, rollable OLED displays of some 100 inches," an industry source said.

LG Display will publicize a prototype of 18-inch rollable OLED display at the upcoming fair, which the company unveiled last year. But Expectations are that the company may also unveil rollable OLED displays of some 70 to 100 inches at closed-door meetings with its clients.

For now, LG Display produces 55-, 65- and 77-inch OLED displays to be used in manufacturing TVs from LG Electronics.

An LG Display official said, "We are already holding key technologies to develop rollable OLED displays. But the market demand has yet to catch up with our expectations. That's why we are still considering whether to mass-produce the rollable OLED panels."

LG Electronics declined to comment on details over the company's plan to promote OLED TVs at the CES. A company spokesman said, "We cannot reveal our plans over rollable OLED TVs at the upcoming tech fair."

Rollable TVs, as the name implies, uses displays that are flexible enough to carry around, reducing burdens of space restrictions. But it does not mean that the TVs can be foldable.

In June of last year, the company unveiled an 18-inch rollable OLED display using a paper-thin panel. But as the 18-inch display was rolled up to a radius of three centimeters, the upcoming devices will not be fully rollable.

The company has recently introduced a plan to develop ultra-high-definition (UHD) transparent, flexible OLED panels of over 60 inches by 2017.

Meanwhile, LG Display is leading the large-sized OLED TV market, with its rival Samsung Electronics focusing on developing panels with small-sized OLEDs for its smart devices.

At this year's tech fair, expectations are LG Display will continue to stress the importance of OLED as the next big thing in the display industry. Han Sang-beom, who was recently promoted to LG Display vice chairman, delivered a keynote speech on the future of OLEDs during last year's IFA fair in Berlin.